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Hobgoblin

Sometimes opening a window helps. Otherwise, it can be suffocating.

Serenade, sweetly.
I think these things as I walk down the street, toward the place where the Goblin lives. That disgusting little man, that vile, unworthy scum… he revolts me. I have arranged to meet him. I regret this decision.
Fee, fie, fo, fum. He sits under his bridge. Fuck him. That troll, that gross, gangly, ghastly, ghoul. I’d spit on him if I could. That would make the meeting an awkward pain, though. Imagine that, my spit, coating his face. A barrier between me and him. Perhaps that’d make it more bearable, I think to myself. I laugh to myself. I crinkle my nose and close my eyes, but the light still penetrates them.
The street is wet. My shoes are wet. Soon, my socks will be wet. Then, my feet will get wet. And then I will be a soggy fuck, trodding flatly through these dull streets, uncomfortable, barely mobile, slowed by the stringy, soaking fabric between my sickly skin and the wet ground.
I’ll get in and I’ll get what I need, and then I’ll be out. I should have taken a jet, should have flown, should have avoided this shit, this shitty, shitty shit that shits on me. Fuck this shit.
I’m a poor fuck, though, and I can’t afford such niceties. I trod along, thinking the thoughts that I think and hoping that things fall into place, hoping that I need not plan, hoping that my present route gets me where I need to be, because fuck if I have another way to get there.
Suddenly, light. More of it. A billboard. A huge, neon billboard, towering above me, and eyes, her eyes, some big, female eyes, blue-green, blinking, beautiful. They’re staring right at me from that sign. There are no words to accompany them, just the eyes. That’s how they’re doing it these days. They’re just staring you down. They’re not even telling you shit anymore because they know you’ll buy their shit anyways.
I’m not above it, but I’m not in the mood right now. The eyes glance after me longingly, subtly so. The rain pelts them but they stay open through it all.
It’s dark and dirty here, dark, dirty and dingy, and damn, it’s ugly when you put it all together. The buildings are like dying leviathans. They shoot up into the sky and the sky still towers above them, and they mourn their own inability to pierce through those clouds, through the atmosphere. Someday, perhaps, but not today. For now, they deteriorate, and they wish they were taller. They always wish they were taller. They multiply, they fuck and they reproduce, but numbers aren’t enough, no. They have to get taller, too.
I’m burning time, looking up at those buildings. That’s all I’m really doing is burning time. Letting it tick away, second by second, and feeling sorry for myself, and feeling pointlessly, spitefully better than those dark, disappointed monoliths, even though I know they can’t feel anything, can’t see anything, don’t give a shit about me and never will. They’re too busy being tall and cold and hard.
I’m going to take a nap here, under this fire escape, before I continue.

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